The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Division of Preservation and Access has offered Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions for more than a decade. These grants help small and mid-sized cultural heritage institutions such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, town and county records offices, and colleges and universities improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections. Awards of up to $6000 support preservation related collection assessments, consultations, training and workshops, and institutional and collaborative disaster and emergency planning. Preservation Assistance Grants also support education and training in best practices for sustaining digital collections, standards for digital preservation, and the care and handling of collections during digitization. Institutions may request funds for a preservation assessment of digital collections. NEH does not fund digitization or the development of digital programs in this grant category.

All applications to the NEH must be submitted through Grants.gov. See the application guidelines for details.

Small and mid-sized institutions that have never received an NEH grant and those considering projects in digital preservation are especially encouraged to apply.

For more information, contact the staff of NEH's Division of Preservation and Access at 202-606-8570 and preservation@neh.gov.